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Home  »  The Book of Georgian Verse  »  Samuel Rogers (1763–1855)

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909.

To the Butterfly

Samuel Rogers (1763–1855)

CHILD of the sun! pursue thy rapturous flight,

Mingling with her thou lov’st in fields of light;

And, where the flowers of Paradise unfold,

Quaff fragrant nectar from their cups of gold.

There shall thy wings, rich as an evening-sky,

Expand and shut with silent ecstasy!

—Yet wert thou once a worm, a thing that crept

On the bare earth, then wrought a tomb and slept.

And such is man; soon from his cell of clay

To burst a seraph in the blaze of day!